Monday, July 23, 2012

Penn State Football: Too Big to Fail

So we're half an hour away from "unprecedented" sanctions - which are being reported as the same sanctions everyone gets for giving recruits money, plus the taking away of money - and someone was quoted on ESPN radio this morning as being against any football punishments. This former player (I honestly didn't catch which one) was saying that, if the NCAA were to take away football, that would be bad, because it would punish the entire community of State College, which, in his words "revolves around Saturday gameday." Chuck Klosterman on Bill Simmons said that there will be no deterrent from this. That a child molester wouldn't stop because of the "death penalty" to a school.

I am not sure I am in favor of whatever punishment is going to come out, because something in me is fundamentally uneasy with anything that tacitly equates giving Reggie Bush's family a house with covering up decades of systemic child rape. I think punishing the football program with scholarships and bowl bans makes this too small in a way.

but:

That former player's point is EXACTLY the reason some punishment is needed against football. And Klosterman is completely wrong if he thinks the people you are trying to change with sanctions are pederasts.

The entire situation was allowed to occur because football was so big everyone from the administration to the police couldn't have a world where even the most heinous of offenses could bring it down. It is that mentality - of football as too big to fail - that needs to change, in State College, and elsewhere.